Razor Freestyle Scooter

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Get on your stick and ride far away from this game. Preferably in the direction of Tony Hawk 2...

By David Smith

It would be hard to conceive of a game driven by more dislikable motivations than Razor Freestyle Scooter. It employs a recycled engine, derivative gameplay, and a flash-in-the-pan fad license to the end of making a quick buck to close out the fourth calendar quarter - make no mistake, this is game design with the marketing and accounting departments solidly at the helm.

We have established in the preview coverage of Razor that my slightly-less-than-better nature wishes to rain hellfire, napalm, Agent Orange, etc., upon this game very badly, to curse its name and demand that it be expunged from the annals of gaming for ever and ever, amen. This I will not do. Objectively speaking, as if it rested in a vacuum devoid of the considerations that relate to the previous paragraph, Razor is not actually that bad a game. No power on Earth will be able to make me play it again, but it is not actually that bad a game.

Gameplay That's because it's Grind Session, which was also not actually that bad a game. Shaba Games swore up and down on a stack of Bibles that their skateboarding simulation began development well before Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was publicly shown, and while it didn't turn out quite as well as that instant classic, it would have been very well-received in its absence. It was reasonably responsive, and employed the same emphasis on trick combinations in conjunction with line-oriented level design.

That, then, is how Razor plays as well. The tricks are different, mainly BMX lifts performed on the eponymous scooters, but the goals you're given (do this trick, find this object, grind so far, earn so many points) and the mechanics of achieving those goals should be completely familiar. The only new advancement mechanic is the placement of wheels all around the level, which develop the widget collection from Tony Hawk into something a little more Mario-ish - there are lots of them grouped in lines, rather than a few of them in scattered spots. This would be something interesting to build on if there were more levels, but you run out of space to scoot in remarkably quickly.

Graphics Swap in Daewon Song for the hep superdeformoids, yank the handlebars off the scooter (a la Marty McFly) and you've got - you guessed it - Grind Session. Razor has the same deficiencies in texture detail and environmental variation in comparison to Tony Hawk. Shaba's done a decent job of swapping in all the new trick animations, though, considering that they had to switch to an entirely new style of tricks and character model design. However, the bail animations still leave as much to be desired as Grind Session's, and the characters have the same weird disconnection with the environment when they crash - they still don't have shadows, so they seem to be superimposed over the landscape rather than actually occupying space within it.

Sound Why does a game purportedly made for little kids have a skateboarding game's MERC Standard Issue violent punk soundtrack? Go figure, I say. Regardless of such considerations, though, this isn't good music. Speaking as one familiar with bad pop punk, this is very bad pop punk, and lots of it. I can envision worse alternatives, but there are plenty of better ones, too.

The other item on the aural annoyance list is the grind sound effect, a high, tinny pegs-on-a-rail whine much less pleasant than the deeper sounds in Tony Hawk et al. This sounds like something rather small to be complaining about, but first contemplate the amount of time you spend grinding in a game like this. Luckily, though, the rest of the effects are comparatively inoffensive.

The Verdict

Heck with this. If you haven't got Tony Hawk 2, buy Tony Hawk 2. If you've already got Tony Hawk 2, play it some more. Same damn thing, heck of a lot more fun. Acclaim's Dave Mirra I'm willing to offer some respect to because its trick system employs some original mechanics - Razor, to strip the statement of unkind embellishment, does not. It doesn't do anything new with its variation on the trickster's mount, if indeed there's any such thing that could be done with these thrice-condemned yuppoid doomed-once-February-rolls-around widgets.

So buy Tony Hawk. And while I'm at it, if for some reason you feel moved to buy yourself or someone else a Razor, blow the extra money on an honest-to-God skateboard. You'll thank yourself in the spring, trust me.

6PresentationA robot has kidnapped your friends! Scoot to save them! What the hell? There are some improvements on the Grind Session interface, though, like a better balance meter.

5.5GraphicsLooks like Grind Session, which is to say not as good as Tony Hawk. The textures and architecture are a bit below par, as is the bail animation, although the trick animation is actually quite good.